


out here (it's like i'm someone else)

by blackorchids



Category: That '70s Show
Genre: F/M, Getting to Know Each Other, Going Home, House Cleaning, Intimacy, Jackie Burkhart Has Hidden Depths, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Pre-Relationship, Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-10-20 15:24:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20677616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackorchids/pseuds/blackorchids
Summary: Jackie and Hyde go back to his mother's abandoned house.





	out here (it's like i'm someone else)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Miranda Lambert's song _The House That Built Me_ which always makes me cry
> 
> still unsure what we're doing here, people, this did not turn out how I expected

He’s only been sleeping with Jackie for a couple weeks when she gets a weird look on her face while hovering _naked_ above him and says, “What ever happened to that shithole you lived in before the Formans took you in?”

Hyde squeezes her hips and groans. “Doll, this is _not_ the time.”

But this is Jackie, and she doesn’t give a damn that she’s ruining the mood. “No, I’m serious!” She says, still shifting her hips because women are _demons_. “Did you guys rent that bungalow or was it in the family? You said your grandma used to take care of you, was it hers?”

Hyde rolls them over and attempts to cover her mouth and she laughs hysterically, wrapping her legs around his waist and still talking from behind his hand, squealing when he nips her on her neck and pinches her sides.

Later, when he’s towel-drying his hair and she’s adjusting her bra-cups like she doesn’t know he’s watching, she seems to remember her point. “No, but really,” she continues, like they’re in the middle of a conversation. “Tell me about this housing situation.”

“We really do better when we don’t talk.” Hyde tells her and then he winces when she pouts at him, showy and dramatic and hiding real hurt. Without even really knowing what he’s doing but intent on getting her to stop looking like she’s going to cry, he says,“But if you _really_ have to know—”__

_ _So he tells her about his grandparents and a little bit about when he was a kid and his grandmother taught him how to cook. It _was_ their house, which means there’s a good reason to believe that it’s stayed empty and unbothered despite it being abandoned for months._ _

_ _And that’s how he finds himself in his grandfather’s dark, empty house, the following Sunday afternoon, watching Jackie, in a pair of sturdy jeans and too-expensive leather knee-high boots, step through the door he hadn’t let her pass through on the night he took her to the prom._ _

_ _The electric has been turned off, but Jackie throws open as many windows as she can force up, leaves the doors open for “air circulation” and inspects every room like she’s constructing a floorplan in her mind._ _

_ _“The space is really great!” She tells him excitedly from the kitchen. She inspects the cabinets and leans up on her toes to peek out of the filthy window above the sink. He shamelessly watches her ass, and barely notices when she smacks him in the stomach as she passes by to go into the dining room._ _

_ _In there, Jackie admires, without irony, an ancient china cabinet and several dressers and tables, talks at him about types of wood and refinishing-versus-replacing. She pulls him closer and licks the hem of his shirt, tugging it up so she can clean some of the dust on the stained-glass panel and inspect the quality. When she’s done categorizing things into keep and trash selections, she heads towards the basement and tells him to jiggle the door open for her. She steps over two dead rats without even blinking and uses his jacket to wipe away cobwebs before fearlessly going down the rickety stairs with only a flashlight._ _

_ _The basement is basically empty, nothing to see except some molding boxes of god-knows-what and a rusted-through washing machine._ _

_ _“There’s not even water down here,” Jackie announces cheerfully, checking the foundations with the beam of the flashlight and rambling on about something Red had told her, like she has no idea that Hyde’s mind is slowly imploding. Maybe she does, though, because she turns to him, dust smeared across one cheekbone and grins. “There’s a lot you still don’t know about me.”_ _

_ _She darts back up the stairs and heads back out towards the Camino, reaching over into the bed of the car and pulling out a broom, two mops, and a bucket full of bottles and cans of cleaning liquids._ _

_ _“Martina thought it would be good for me to know how to take care of a house,” she tells him later, when she’s made him drag most of the contents of the place out to the dumpsters in the alley. There’s one pile of debris near the front door, and a second in the kitchen next to two full garbage bags with the entire inventory that had been left to rot in the cabinets, and Jackie’d made him clean the bathroom after telling him how she wanted it done. “In case my future housekeeper gets sick or takes maternity leave.”_ _

_ _Hyde stares at her in complete disbelief but she doesn’t even notice, still mopping in the now-empty bedrooms._ _

_ _“If you could find the deed,” she says, when they’re done for the day and sitting side-by-side on the counter. “I mean, this is technically also your house.”_ _

_ _And if it’s his house, he can get out of the Forman’s hair and come back out here in the boonies. Or he could sell it and start fresh somewhere else. Pay back Red and Kitty and keep the rest of it._ _

_ _“It’d be good money for college,” she mumbles to herself, and Hyde feels like he got hit in the face that she’s taking him going to college as an eventuality instead of an impossibility. Hyde pictures her in a town with more possibilities than Point Place and thinks the world was maybe not prepared for it._ _

_ _She lets him into the newly cleaned shower with her and then bitches and moans about how they got water on the floor and makes him mop it up before they go, locking the house up behind them._ _

**Author's Note:**

> come talk to me on [tumblr](http://www.rosalinesbenvolio.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
